The Internet has proven to be very popular with computer users. One of the more popular applications is browsing the World-Wide Web (WWW), also known as web browsing. The web is, generally, a decentralized collection of files, referred to as web pages, which are typically in a type of format known as a mark-up language, such as the HyperText Mark-Up Language (HTML). Each web page has a location that is identified by an address, in particular, a Universal Resource Locator (URL) address. A collection of web pages that is typically stored at a given physical location is referred to generally as a web site, where all of the pages of the web site have a common denominator in their addresses.
A given web page typically links to one or more other web pages, via one or more web page links contained within the page itself. A web page link, also known as a hyperlink, is such that when it is clicked on or otherwise selected, the web page to which it points is retrieved and displayed on the user's screen. Thus, browsing the web refers to viewing web pages, where a user is directed to another web page when clicking on a link, such that the user views different web pages in a given browsing session by clicking on the links to those web pages, or otherwise references the pages by their addresses.
Many users, especially home users, browse the web using a relatively slow mechanism to achieve an Internet connection, such as a modem. As an example, a modem may only have a bandwidth of 28,800–56,000 bits per second (bps), while a faster mechanism to achieve an Internet connection, such as a cable modem, a Digital Subscriber Loop (DSL) modem, or a T1 connection, may have a bandwidth ranging anywhere from 256,000–1,500,000 bps. This is because many users are located in areas that are not serviced by these higher bandwidth Internet connection mechanisms, or the cost to have such mechanisms is prohibitively high.
Such users, when encountering a web page having a number of hyperlinks to other potentially useful web pages, thus face a conundrum. Within the prior art, typically the only way such users can determine what content a given web page holds, and/or whether a given web page will be of interest, is to select the web link and be directed to the web page to which the link points. The user's web browser then retrieves the content from this new web page (referred to herein also as “downloading”), and displays it on the screen. However, a slow connection to the Internet makes for the web browsing experience to be very slow: the user typically has to wait for a significant fraction of the content of a page to load and be displayed in order to determine what that content is. If the content is not to the user's liking, he or she must then go back to the previous web page, and select another link, only to have to wait again until the web page to which this new link points is loaded and displayed on the user's computer. For many users, web browsing can be frustrating, because a user can only determine what the content of a particular page is by committing to downloading that page.
For these and other reasons, there is a need for the present invention.